The next step for these 'softbots' includes a diverse array of potential uses, such as shape-changing robots capable of engaging in search-and-rescue operations, space applications for which a 'gravity-agnostic' crawler would be highly valued, and medical applications in which a biocompatible, soft robot would reduce incidental tissue damage and discomfort.

American boffins say they are poised to invent a new class of shape-shifting "soft bodied robots" which will manoeuvre - perhaps inside the human body - by mimicking the literally gut-wrenching means by which certain species of creepy-crawly get about.

Assembled experts in the States have opened the door to a fearsome new class of "softbots" by probing the very bowels of crawling Manduca sexta caterpillars. These little chaps, according to Professor Jake Socha, move using "a unique phenomenon of gut sliding ... unlike any form of legged locomotion previously reported".

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert did more than peddle fear, uncertainty, and doubt about nuclear energy in his columnpublished July 19 on the newspaper’s OP ED page. In a piece which overflows with florid language, Herbert bought into the anti-nuclear program of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) hook, line, and sinker. It’s too bad he didn’t talk to anyone from the nuclear industry before he hit the keyboard. Maybe if he’d done some independent thinking, or just considered other points of view, the column would have turned over to be different.

A study prepared by KPMG and published July 17 by RWE Power, which wants to build new nuclear reactors in the UK, says forget about it unless the “carbon floor price” is raised to [L]80/ton CO2. Britain's new generation of nuclear power stations will not be built if the Government refuses to support them beyond the current insufficient carbon price mechanisms, the KPMG report said.

The KPMG report called for early decisions to radically change the UK electricity market to get nuclear energy back in the game. It said that measures to bring investors to the table must do more than just raise the carbon tax. While the report only alludes to the concept of loan guarantees, it seems to offer the government a way out of its hard line position of no direct subsidies for new nuclear plants.

I gave a talk on July 16, 2010 for the Singularity University which going on at a building at the Mountain View, California NASA facility.

Overview of the talk on Latest Developments and Current Capabilities in Nanotechnology-

2D and 3D Nanoscale patterning and manufacturing (the kind of equipment that Singularity University Groups could buy or rent or get access to for Nanotechnology projects)
Quantum dots (Getting commercialized in many areas now - cameras, sensors, displays, etc...)
Self Assembly (strong candidate for enabling the next lithography nodes)
Memristors (HP is developing to beat Flash memory in 3-5 years, uses nanowires and could put memory and processing together)
Sensors and electronics in living cells (examples of something that people used to say and sometimes still say is impossible and mockable. the movie fantastic voyage with Rachel Welch in a submarine in the bloodstream)

Carbon nanotubes & graphene (industrial applications for nanotech)

Note: I did not cover DNA Nanotechnology because other presenters covered this in detail.

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Such a scenario in which the universe is born from inside a wormhole (also called an Einstein-Rosen Bridge) is suggested in a paper from Indiana University theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski in Physics Letters B.

The Einstein-Cartan-Kibble-Sciama theory of gravity provides a simple scenario in early cosmol-
ogy which is alternative to standard cosmic inflation and does not require scalar fields. The torsion of spacetime prevents the appearance of the cosmological singularity in the early Universe filled with Dirac particles averaged as a spin fluid. Instead, its expansion starts from a state at which the Universe has a minimum but finite radius. We show that the dynamics of the closed Universe immediately after this state naturally solves the flatness and horizon problems in cosmology because of an extremely small and negative torsion density parameter, 10^−69. This scenario also suggests that the contraction of our Universe preceding the state of minimum radius could correspond to the dynamics of matter inside the event horizon of a newly formed black hole existing in another universe.

Well, a spinning black hole would have imparted some spin to the space-time inside it, and this should show up as a "preferred direction" in our universe, says Poplawski. Such a preferred direction would result in the violation of a property of space-time called Lorentz symmetry, which links space and time. It has been suggested that such a violation could be responsible for the observed oscillations of neutrinos from one type to another

Each one addresses a fundamental process that lies at the heart of cooking, namely the mixing of ingredients; the physical and chemical transformation of these ingredients into new compounds; and finally their modeling into aesthetically pleasing and delectable textures and shapes. Our hope is that these designs will provide a glimpse at the new aesthetic and cultural possibilities, which can be brought forth by a new, digital gastronomy.

Digital Fabricator

The Digital Fabricator is a personal, three-dimensional printer for food, which works by storing, precisely mixing, depositing and cooking layers of ingredients. Its cooking process starts with an array of food canisters, which refrigerate and store a user’s favorite ingredients. These are piped into a mixer and extruder head that can accurately deposit elaborate food combinations with sub-millimeter precision. While the deposition takes place, the food is heated or cooled by the Fabricator’s chamber or the heating and cooling tubes located on the printing head. This fabrication process not only allows for the creation of flavors and textures that would be completely unimaginable through other cooking techniques, but, through a touch-screen interface and web connectivity, also allows users to have ultimate control over the origin, quality, nutritional value and taste of every meal.

They describe developing a nonmetallic cloak that uses identical glass resonators made of chalcogenide glass, a type of dielectric material (one that does not conduct electricity). In computer simulations, the cloak made objects hit by infrared waves—approximately one micron or one-millionth of a meter long—disappear from view.

Earlier attempts by other researchers used metal rings and wires. “Ours is the first to do the cloaking of cylindrical objects with glass,” Semouchkina said.

This elite group of professionals has over 19 victories at Le Mans, Sebring, and Daytona. The Very Light Car’s shape was designed by Northrop Grumman’s aerodynamics fellow, Barnaby Wainfan, who met Edison2’s Chief of Design, Ron Mathis, while Ron was working for Audi Sport North America on the R10. Five-time Le Mans winner Emanuele Pirro will be driving in the competition along side Brad Jaeger, an up-and-coming endurance racer.

Edison2 entered the PIAXP expecting to build an electric or electric hybrid vehicle. Our early analysis of efficiency, however, pointed to the unequivocal virtues of light weight and low aerodynamic drag. Instead of lugging around hundreds of pounds of batteries, Edison2 chose a more realistic and conventional power source for the Very Light Car: an internal combustion engine running on E85.

The Edison2 is twice as efficient as a Tesla Roadster and more efficient than the Aptera.
The Edison 2 weighs about 750 pounds and is super aerodynamic (0.15 drag coefficient rating). It is built safe by race car team veterans.

The new estimate is that there are 100 million habitable worlds in the Galaxy. Some may feel negative about this. What about the Fermi Paradox? If there are so many habitable worlds then why haven't some of them had aliens come visit us.

I say get really powerful space telescope arrays and look at those planets in detail. Image them directly at 10 meter resolution or better. More on hypertelescopes below.

Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal on Thursday launched a $35 computing device that will be made available to ‘learners’ right from primary schools to universities. Aiming at bringing down the price to $10, the Ministry has also begun discussions with global manufacturers to start mass production of arguably the world’s cheapest laptop

The Linux based device will also have provisions for running on solar power besides the usual battery- operated systems. The Rs 1,500/$35 computing device is expected to first hit higher education institutions — colleges and varsities starting 2011 — but the government could subsidise 50 per cent of this cost, bringing down the price.

The first experimental evidence of a new solar process, combining electronic and chemical pathways, to isolate CO2 (carbon capture) is presented. This solar thermal electrochemical photo (STEP) process is a synergy of solid-state and solar thermal processes, and is fundamentally capable of converting more solar energy than photovoltaic or solar thermal processes alone. Here, CO2 is captured using a 750−950 °C electrolysis cell powered by a full spectrum solar simulator in a single step. The process uses the full spectrum; solar thermal energy decreases the energy required for carbon capture, while visible sunlight generates electronic charge to drive the electrolysis. CO2 can be captured from 34% to over 50% solar energy efficiency (depending on the level of solar heat inclusion), as solid carbon and stored, or used as carbon monoxide to be available for a feedstock to synthesize (with STEP generated hydrogen) solar diesel fuel, synthetic jet fuel, or chemical production.

This year production is expected to rise to 55,000 tons from 50,772 tons last year, according to data from the World Nuclear Association.

Demand is expected to increase by 46 percent over the next decade, mainly driven by China, according to CRU. “China’s propensity for heavy and early stockpiling will also influence the market,” Schodde said in the presentation.

Supplies from dismantled nuclear weapons and other sources not directly from mines will fall to 13 percent of demand by 2020 from 27 percent last year, he said.

The advance, published in the June 14 issue of Nano Letters, could one day lead to the ability to direct, deliver, and store nanoparticles and biomolecules on all-optical chips.

“We demonstrated the power of what we call resonant cavity trapping, where a particle is guided along a small waveguide and then pulled onto a micro-ring resonator,” explains Kenneth Crozier, an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) who directed the research. “Once on the ring, optical forces prevent it from escaping, and cause it to revolve around it.”

We demonstrate optically trapping of microparticles on silicon microring resonators. Once trapped on a microring, a particle can be confined in an optical potential with a depth of 25 kBT over the entire microring’s circumference. The particles are propelled around the microring at hundreds of micrometers per second, producing periodic revolutions at a few hertz. We anticipate that the increased force and highly accurate positioning obtainable with this system will lead to various nanomanipulation applications.

Most molecules are held together by chemical bonds between atoms – ‘nano-knots’ are instead mechanically bonded by interpenetrating loops. Liverpool scientists have managed to create nanoscale knots in the laboratory by mixing together two simple starting materials – one a rigid aromatic compound and the other a more flexible amine linker.

This is an unusual example of ‘self-assembly’, a process which underpins biology and allows complex structures to assemble from more simple building blocks. Each knot is ‘tied’ three times: that is, at least three chemical bonds must be broken to untie the knot. A single knot is a complex assembly of 20 smaller molecules

* scientists have surveyed only 0.1% of the observable universe
* Instead of searching for the light from individual galaxies with an optical telescope, the team stalked a different quarry, red-shifted radio waves emitted by hydrogen atoms floating in huge clouds within the galaxies.
* Subtracting out radio signals 100,000 times stronger from our own galaxy and from television broadcasts, they detected the blurred 21-centimeter signals from galaxies about 6 billion to 12 billion light-years away.
* To be useful in mapping the universe, the method needs to be refined so that researchers need study only the variations in the 21-centimeter radiation alone. "We’re working on that right now," Chang says. With a purpose-built radio telescope, the approach could map as much as 50% of the observable universe far faster and cheaper than galaxy surveys can

Last fall, researchers, including Larry Taylor, a distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, discovered “lunar dew” on the moon’s surface — absorbed “water” in the uppermost layers of lunar soil. This discovery of water debunked beliefs held since the return of the first Apollo rocks that the moon was bone-dry.

A group of three to five people broke into the station, killed two guards and assaulted two workers before planting explosives on the premises, the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office said today on its website. Four devices detonated and a fifth was defused, investigators said

The findings, just published online in Biosensors and Bioelectronics, a professional journal, bring the researchers one step closer to technology that could clean biowaste at the same time it produces useful levels of electricity – a promising new innovation in wastewater treatment and renewable energy.

Engineers found that by coating graphite anodes with a nanoparticle layer of gold, the production of electricity increased 20 times. Coatings with palladium produced an increase, but not nearly as much. And the researchers believe nanoparticle coatings of iron – which would be a lot cheaper than gold – could produce electricity increases similar to that of gold, for at least some types of bacteria.

The government will submit plans to develop cleaner energy, including nuclear power and gas from unconventional sources, in 2011 to 2020 to the State Council, or Cabinet, for approval, Jiang Bing, head of the National Energy Administration’s planning and development department, said in Beijing today.

China needs between 500 billion and 600 billion yuan annually to develop energy-conservation and low-carbon technologies, according to the government’s 2050 China Energy and CO2 Emissions Report published last year. The country attracted $11.5 billion of asset financing in clean-energy technology in the second quarter, more than Europe and the U.S. combined

Worldwide uranium resources, production and demand are all increasing, according to the latest edition of the Red Book. However, total identified uranium resources will last for over 100 years at current consumption rates.

The amount of uranium identified that can be economically mined rose to some 6.3 million tonnes, a 15.5% increase compared with the last edition of Uranium 2009: Resources, Production and Demand - commonly known as the Red Book - published every two years by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The high-cost category (under $100 per pound of U3O8 which is the same as (less than USD 260 per kilogram) was reintroduced into the new edition of the Red Book for the first time since the 1980s in response to the generally increased market prices for uranium in recent years (despite the decline since mid-2007), as well as increasing mining costs and expectations of increasing demand as new nuclear power plants are being planned and constructed.

IAEA projections for the future of nuclear power see it expanding from 375 GWe today to between 500 and 785 GWe by 2035. Such growth would cause an increase in uranium demand from 66,500 tonnes per year to between 87,370 and 138,165 tonnes.

Michael Laine believes a lunar elevator – a space elevator from the surface of the Moon – could be created with materials that are available now. With more research and the right amount of capital, Laine says a lunar elevator could be built within a decade.

* the Moon's gravity is only one sixth that of Earth, it drastically reduces the requirements of the ribbon. A material that is available now, a synthetic polymer material called Zylon (poly(p-phenylene-2,6-benzobisoxazole) which has high strength and excellent thermal stability, could be used.

A Heusler alloy is a ferromagnetic metal alloy based on a Heusler phase. Heusler phases are intermetallics with particular composition and face-centered cubic crystal structure. They are ferromagnetic—even though the constituting elements are not—as a result of the double-exchange mechanism between neighboring magnetic ions.

It is a historical fact that most of the key discoveries in condensed-matter physics and materials science have been made by experimentalists (think superfluidity, superconductivity, the quantum Hall effect, to name but a few). From time to time, theorists make paradigm-shifting predictions that lead to fundamentally new phenomena.

The new work from Nature Materials on Heusler materials are paradigm shifting. Calculations have uncovered a new quantum state of matter in Heusler compounds, which opens up previously unimagined usage possibilities. Heusler compounds can behave like topological insulators (TI).

For almost five years now, TIs have been a hot topic in the field of solid state and material physics. Characteristic of topological insulators is the fact that the materials are actually insulators or semiconductors, although their surfaces or interfaces are made from metal - but not ordinary metal. Like superconductors, the electrons on the surfaces or interfaces do not interact with their environment - they are in a new quantum state. In contrast with superconductors, topological insulators have two non-interacting currents, one for each spin direction. These two spin currents, which are not affected by defects or impurities in the material, can be employed in the futuristic electronics field of 'spintronics' and for processing information in quantum computers.

It is now supposed that Heusler materials may have the same capabilities. Heusler compounds are made up of three elements, which often have semiconductor or magnetic properties. This compound class was discovered by Fritz Heusler back around 1900. One special feature of these compounds is that they exhibit characteristics other than those that might be expected in view of the elements of which they are composed. The first Heusler compound, for example, was made from the non-magnetic elements copper, manganese, and aluminium. Yet, Cu2MnAl acts as a ferromagnet, even at room temperature. On the other hand, a semiconductor can result when three metals are combined. New semiconductors can be designed in the class of Heusler materials with regard to the field of renewable energies; they can be used in solar cells or in thermoelectric applications, for converting heat into electricity. Mainz is internationally renowned as a major location for the design and synthesis of Heusler materials. Important discoveries with regard to Heusler compounds, their properties, and their uses in a wide range of potential applications have been made in Mainz.

The news that Heusler materials are now being considered as possible topological insulators has met with excitement all over the world. "There are two reasons for this," explains Professor Felser. "On the one hand, this large material class with over 1,000 known representatives contains more than 50 compounds that bear the hallmark of TIs. And on the other hand, it is now possible to design completely new physical effects. As the materials are made up of three elements, they can offer a range of other interesting features in addition to the topological quantum state." It is now possible to combine two quantum states such as superconductivity and topological surface effects. This paves the way for completely new and as yet undiscovered characteristics, some of which have already been predicted. "It was previously not considered possible to combine all these possibilities in just one material," explains Professor Felser.

Recently the quantum spin Hall effect was theoretically predicted and experimentally realized in quantum wells based on the binary semiconductor HgTe. The quantum spin Hall state and topological insulators are new states of quantum matter interesting for both fundamental condensed-matter physics and material science. Many Heusler compounds with C1b structure are ternary semiconductors that are structurally and electronically related to the binary semiconductors. The diversity of Heusler materials opens wide possibilities for tuning the bandgap and setting the desired band inversion by choosing compounds with appropriate hybridization strength (by the lattice parameter) and magnitude of spin–orbit coupling (by the atomic charge). Based on first-principle calculations we demonstrate that around 50 Heusler compounds show band inversion similar to that of HgTe. The topological state in these zero-gap semiconductors can be created by applying strain or by designing an appropriate quantum-well structure, similar to the case of HgTe. Many of these ternary zero-gap semiconductors (LnAuPb, LnPdBi, LnPtSb and LnPtBi) contain the rare-earth element Ln, which can realize additional properties ranging from superconductivity (for example LaPtBi) to magnetism (for example GdPtBi) and heavy fermion behaviour (for example YbPtBi). These properties can open new research directions in realizing the quantized anomalous Hall effect and topological superconductors.

The greatest reductions in plaque volume occurred in the treatment groups that received stem cells in addition to the nanoparticles. Also, both groups that received stem cells showed signs of new blood vessel growth (neovascularization) and restoration of artery function

Intraexciton transitions in semiconductor quantum wells are modulated by strong and tunable few-cycle terahertz pulses. Time-resolved terahertz-pump and optical-probe measurements demonstrate that the 1s heavy-hole and light-hole exciton resonances undergo large-amplitude spectral modulations when the terahertz radiation is tuned near the 1s–2p intraexciton transition. The strong nonlinear optical transients exhibit the characteristics of Rabi sidebands. The spectral features also reveal the dephasing properties of the optically dark 2p states. A microscopic theory shows that the 2p-dephasing rate is three times that of the 1s-state. The ultrafast nonlinear optical effects and their quantum nature suggest promising applications to ultrahigh-speed optical signal processing and quantum information processing in the THz region.

Because white roofs reflect far more of the sun’s heat than black ones, buildings with white roofs will stay cooler. If the building is air conditioned, less air conditioning will be required, thus saving energy. Even if there is no air conditioning, the heat absorbed by a black roof both heats the space below, making the space less comfortable, and is also carried into the city air by wind—raising the ambient temperature in what is known as the urban heat island effect. Additionally, there’s a third, less familiar way in which a black roof heats the world: it radiates energy directly into the atmosphere, which is then absorbed by the nearest clouds and ends up trapped by the greenhouse effect, contributing to global warming.

We stand at a cusp of an unique demographic transition. For the first time in human history, the whole planet is aging: within a few decades, people that have been made sick, dependent, or unproductive by the damage of aging will outnumber the young and healthy. The diseases of aging will rob the world of some of our most productive citizens, and rapidly drive up the cost of healthcare and the budgets for public and private pensions. Given “aging as usual,” the sheer size of the aging generation sets the stage for global economic catastrophe.

A report (The Demographic and Biomedical Case for Late-Life Interventions in Aging) highlights three key approaches to the challenge that must all be met to meet the goal of maintaining the health and productivity of today’s generations: (1) expand public health measures to help citizens avoid suffering prematurely from age-related disease; (2) develop new medicines that boost the body’s ability to maintain health and productivity longer by slowing down the degenerative aging process; and (3) use the principles of regenerative engineering, the special focus of SENS Foundation, to create therapies that remove, replace, repair, and neutralize the cellular and molecular damage that accumulates in aging bodies, and thus restore youthful structure and function to the tissues and lives of aging citizens.

And to meet that goal, the report is a call for dramatic, targeted investments by the National Institutes on Health (NIH) and other public and private biomedical research organizations to bring forward new therapies against the degenerative aging process.

James Benford (Microwave Sciences) has some thoughts on the issue growing out of his own work with brother Gregory on interstellar beacons and SETI reception in general. The Forgan & Nichol paper on detection of leakage radiation does neglect our continuing use of microwave beams not only for radar, but also for likely future beaming of power for space purposes, such as power transfer.

Honda is considering building its Insight and two other hybrids in the U.S. and plans to expand its lineup of hybrids to five or so by 2013. It also said the electric car will roll out first in the U.S.

Next, the researchers said they plan to investigate how the change in asymmetry affects the resistance-less flow of electricity in potential room-temperature superconductors. They then hope to find a method for enabling them to maintain their superconductivity at higher temperatures.

Built by Raytheon Missile Systems of Tuscon, Arizona, the 32-kilowatt infrared laser is shown illuminating and heating the wingtip and then the underside of what looks like a radar-seeking drone – until its remote pilot loses control and the aircraft catches fire and plummets into the ocean.

* the laser has to fire from a moving, rolling ship, with salt-laden air severely weakening its beam.
* the laser operate on the US navy and coastguard's standard ship defence system, Phalanx which usually fires gatling guns

Having already completed site preparation, project lead China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corporation is expected to officially start construction later in July and put the reactors into operation in 2015 and 2016. Fangchenggang will feature two domestically developed CPR-1000 units producing 1037 MWe each for a grand total of 24 billion yuan ($3.5 billion), with four more planned to follow.